Microsoft Partner Center - Employment Verification failure

Starting in July 2024, like hundreds of others here, I have been trying to pass the verification process within the Microsoft Partner Center (after joining ID@Xbox).

Our company is based outside the U.S., but we have a D-U-N-S number registered. I have provided a domain purchase receipt, WHOIS lookup records, and even changed emails and phone numbers everywhere to ensure consistency across all platforms. Despite eliminating any discrepancies, I still haven't been able to pass this step.

I’m not sure how the process worked before, but I believe we are facing these complications due to the new EU rules and regulations being communicated via the Partner Center profile and emails. I have reviewed these regulations.

These rules refer to compliance requirements under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes specific obligations on online platforms, including game developers, to enhance transparency and accountability. The key provisions relevant to this situation include:

• Trader Information Disclosure: Articles 30 and 31 of the DSA mandate that platforms verify and display trader contact information. This includes providing an address, phone number, and email address on your product’s detail page to ensure consumers have access to clear and accurate information about the entities behind digital products and services.
• Business Verification: The DSA requires platforms to implement measures to verify the identity of traders before allowing them to offer services within the EU. This may involve providing documentation such as a D-U-N-S number, WHOIS lookup records, or domain purchase receipts to confirm business legitimacy.

Non-compliance with these regulations can lead to significant consequences, including the delisting of games from platforms in EU markets. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that developer accounts and associated products fully meet these requirements.

It seems that, despite being legitimate businesses, those of us struggling with verification may simply need to ensure that our contact details are clear, accurate, and properly formatted.

In this regard I have two questions:

1. I’m calling on anyone who has successfully passed verification to explain how and where the contact information they provided matched Microsoft’s requirements. We really need your help!
2. Dear Jill, I kindly ask for your help in escalating this issue to the engineering team. My studio is the first game publishing company in my country, and we even have already managed to obtain devkits—yet we still cannot gain full access to the platform. I find it hard to believe that we might be prevented from joining the global gamedev community over something as trivial as phone number and email format so that an AI finds us reliable.

Thank you in advance.